One of the more frustrating aspects of the discussion to me (not a public health expert) is that to a first approximation…it worked? We got a vaccine and an effective treatment and vastly reduced the number of dead and disabled. With no roadmap. That’s a Goddamn triumph.
It was! It was a flawed response, but there's no question our losses could have been vastly worse. The vaccine bailed us out big time, but if you look at the data closures/mitigations helped a lot too. It makes me crazy that popular wisdom is coalescing around it being a failure because it wasn't!